The Athens Regional Library is helping residents keep in touch digitally. The library closed all 11 branches on March 15, but Executive Director Valerie Bell says she and her staff have worked to increase online content and access.
"In the last two weeks we have been working really hard behind the scenes to be able to provide our patrons and residents of Athens with, as best as we can, seamless library services to help with the normalcy of physical distancing. We're socially connecting while we're physically distancing."
Bell says there are a number of new options available.
"We pushed out our virtual storytime. We've recently pushed out our digital only library cards. We've increased our e-books, e-audio, and magazines by about 80%."
Virtual storytime has been a massive hit.
"It's wonderful for kids and it kind of relieves parents. At 10:30 every weekday morning they can log into one of the library's Facebook pages and they can get about a 30 minute storytime program and it's live."
Visit www.athenslibrary.org, or the Facebook page.
